I don’t understand why any cats like me. At least half my interactions with my roommate’s cat is mild harassment (like poking him or trying to spook him, nothing cruel or painful of course, just messing with him), calling his name loudly and randomly and meowing at him when he doesn’t answer, that kind of thing. And yet he frickin’ loves me. I pet him in ways you’re taught to never pet a cat and the whole time he purrs like a motorboat. It probably helps that he’s a breed with that kind of temperament, but still.
All I’ve done with campus cat is give him food and sit and hang out by buildings with him, and now he’ll rub up on me and come trotting over when I find him each night, and follow me to wherever I decide I’m going to sit. And after he eats he’ll groom himself and sometimes “nap” a bit. I know it’s probably just because I’m the food lady and I give him actual cat food, but I like to think he genuinely enjoys my company because he feels secure around me. As of today I’ve known this cat for two weeks.
Humans had enough trouble seeing other humans as human. We are not even remotely smart enough to know how smart animals are. We would have a huge existential crisis if we realised other creatures are as sentient and aware as we are.
I actually took time to sit and just draw a bit today and yesterday because it’s been a long time. It was nice. Tried to minimize my use of the eraser.
A bobcat and a coyote from the university’s vertebrate collection.
“The patient: this 3-day-old little boy was born with torn upper and lower wings. Let’s see how we can help!”
Today the Department of Awesomely Good Deeds salutes costume designer and master embroiderer Romy McCloskey who used her fine skills with delicate materials to help a monarch butterfly she’d raised and who’d emerged from his cocoon with damaged right wings.
“The operating room and supplies: towel, wire hanger, contact cement, toothpick, cotton swab, scissors, tweezers, talc powder, extra butterfly wing”
“Securing the butterfly and cutting the damaged parts away. Don’t worry it doesn’t hurt them. It’s like cutting hair or trimming fingernails”
“Ta-da! With a little patience and a steady hand, I fit the new wings to my little guy”
“The black lines do not match completely and it is missing the black dot (male marking) on the lower right wing, but with luck, he will fly”
“FLIGHT DAY! After a day of rest and filling his belly with homemade nectar, it is time to see if he will fly”
“With a quick lap around the yard and a little rest on a bush, he was off! A successful surgery and outcome! Bye, little buddy! Good luck”
1. Do not keep them in pairs. Hamsters are loners – keeping them together often results in stress, fighting, injuries and death. They are very happy alone.
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2. Minimum cage size
dwarf hamsters: 30 x 20 x 20 inches (80x50x50cm);
bigger hamsters: 40 x 20 x 20inches (100x50x50cm)!
NOT like this:
Living in cages like this for them is like a human living in an elevator – a lot too small and even dangerous!
For them it feels like this:
Behavior like this is a signal for stress because the cage is too small or that they need more bedding:
Better:
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3. Your hamster (always!) needs a hamster wheel – and it must be a lot bigger than you might think!
Hamster must be able to run with a completely straight back
on a closed surface
with a closed back wall!
NOT like this:
Results of those wheels are: spine problems, backache, stress, injuries!
Minimum wheel size for dwarf hamsters: 9-10 inches.
Minimum wheel size for bigger hamsters: 12 inches!
Better:
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4. Do not buy them plastic tubes (at all):
Those tubes are not suitable at all: Hamsters get stuck or suffocate in them easily.
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5. Your hamster needs enough bedding to dig and build tunnels.
NOT like this:
Better:
Your hamster will be extremely happy and dig around and build tunnels all day (night).
Plastic gets swallowed, splinters, can injure or even kill your hamster.
Better:
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7. Hamsters ALWAYS need a sand bath.
Hamsters love rolling around in the sand, for them it’s like showering. How would you feel without a shower?
You can use those little baths as toilets, but you still need a bigger sand bath!
Better:
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8. Hamsters need a house with at least 2 or more chambers to store food, sleep etc. Also make sure that your hamster does have enough hiding places like coconuts, small houses, toilet rolls!
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9. Do use unperfumed toilet paper for nesting material, don’t use “hamster wool” -> it can tangle around a limb and seriously hurt and even kill your hamster!
NOT like this:
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10. Never ever ever put your hamster or any animal in a hamster ball.
They can’t get out, might suffocate or panic, might run against furniture and seriously injure themselves. The ventilation is terrible, your hamster can’t see/smell/hear enough or use any of their senses properly.
In some countries they even discuss about banning those by law!
Even if you think that “your hamster has fun in it” – please don’t use them!
Pet stores often are very misinformed and sell terrible cages and have little to no idea how to keep a happy hamster – please be careful when trusting them. In the end they often just want to make money – and the hamsters suffer.
Please adopt, not buy hamsters – there are too many hamsters in this world that we need any more breeding.
(Sorry for the spelling errors – I made this post in a rush.)
i literally had no idea, so i feel like this really needs to be stressed
Much like with bettas, there’s a lot of companies out there making a huge profit on habitats that are completely unsuitable for your pets, and counting on consumer ignorance.
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Yes to that betta thing! A lot of people will try to tell you that bettas barely need any space to move around in (to the point of putting them in planted vases!), and all that does is give them a poor quality of life! I had to put my betta in a 2 gallon tank to transport him from my school back to home, and he was so depressed in there! He just sat there looking all sad until I could put him in something larger.
Wasps are functionally the same as bees, we just hate them because they’re not as cute n can hurt you more than once without dying
Except they’re not because wasps don’t make honey, they aren’t pollinators, they’re completely different insects and serve a very different function.
Not sure where you’re getting that information from but it is not correct, as wasps are actually very important pollinators.
There are also 20,000 species of described bees and of those there are only a small handful that produce honey, and of those there are currently even less (off the top of my head I can only think of 4) species we can actually harvest any honey from.
Wasps are also pollinators, ever heard of fig wasps, there are a superfamily of wasps called Chalcidoidea and each different species of fig often has one or two very specific species of wasp needed to pollinate it.
There’s still this misconception that wasps aren’t great pollinators compared to bees but this isn’t true, wasps are just as ecologically important in pollination as bees are, and also pollinate flowering plants and trees. For example; thynnine wasps pollinate orchids like this dwarf hammer orchid.
This is super common in Australia where we have about 200 species of orchids (spider orchids, elbow orchids, flying duck orchids) that use male insects (most of which are wasp species) to pollinate.
Also most bee species can hurt you more than once without dying. Yes, honeybees have a barbed stinger and die after they sting, but not all bees are honeybees.
And, as our curator likes to say, evolutionarily speaking bees are basically just vegan wasps.
I’m so happy to see this new movement lauding the many virtues of wasps. I’ve had so many people ask me “what are they good for?” Like what the fuck are YOU good for Heather? Do you even know how many different kinds of wasps there are? Yes they’re important, dammit! An animal doesn’t become worthless just because you personally don’t like it! Your opinion means fuckall to the ecosystem! It doesn’t care!
Also there are thousands of species of parasitoid wasps that are significant predators of other insects and spiders, and the majority of those wasps can’t or won’t sting you anyways.
Just because it isn’t cute enough to make you happy doesn’t mean it’s bad.
PiraticOctopus 